Daily Content Archive
(as of Sunday, January 25, 2015)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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nostrum
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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InterjectionsAn interjection, also known as an exclamation, is a word, phrase, or sound used to convey an emotion such as surprise, excitement, happiness, or anger. What are primary interjections? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Film NoirFilm noir is a style of film characterized by low-key lighting, bleak urban settings, and corrupt, cynical characters who find themselves entangled in the criminal underworld. This dark genre, which gave rise to the film archetypes of the hardboiled private detective and the femme fatale, was especially popular in Hollywood in the 1940s. Classic examples of film noir include The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep. Who first coined the term film noir, and what does it mean? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 League of Nations Founded (1919)The League of Nations was an organization for international cooperation, peace, and security established by the Allied Powers at the end of WWI. A league covenant providing for an assembly, a council, and a secretariat was formulated at the Paris Peace Conference and contained in the Treaty of Versailles. Headquartered at Geneva, the League was weakened by the failure of the US, which had not ratified the Treaty of Versailles, to join the confederation. What organization replaced it in 1946? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 William Somerset Maugham (1874)Maugham was an English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer who abandoned a career in medicine when his first novel had some success. He wrote several popular plays and a total of eight novels before writing his breakthrough masterpiece, the partly autobiographical Of Human Bondage (1915). An expert storyteller, Maugham based many of his stories on his own experiences, including what short story collection that influenced Ian Fleming's James Bond series? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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not utter a word— To be completely silent; to remain discreet (about something); to not tell anyone (about something). More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Burns Night (2017)Burns Night is the anniversary of the birthday of Scottish poet Robert Burns. The day is celebrated not only in Scotland but also in Newfoundland, and wherever there are devotees of this lusty poet. The celebrations generally take the form of recitations of Burns's poetry, the imbibing of quantities of single-malt Scotch whiskey, and the serving of haggis, a Scottish dish made of a sheep's or calf's innards (liver, heart, etc.) boiled in its stomach. At the point of the carving of the haggis, it is traditional to recite "To a Haggis," with its line, "Great chieftain o' the pudding race!" More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: ruleslect - A regional or social variety within a language, a form of speech defined by a homogenous set of rules. More... precisian - An overly precise person, a strict observer of rules and procedures. More... ring - Boxing started off in circles, and when the Marquess of Queensbury introduced a set of rules in 1867, he also introduced the roped-off square, which continued to be called the "ring." More... mistress - First meant "a woman who rules or has control," or a "woman who employs others, as servants." More... | |